Malakoff Diggins preserves California’s largest hydraulic mining site and the historic town of North Bloomfield in Gold Rush country. After stream gold declined in the early 1850s, miners turned to the hills and built a settlement first called Humbug, later Bloomfield and then North Bloomfield. Hydraulic mining, using water carried through long flumes to powerful monitors, carved an immense man-made canyon and employed more than 300 Chinese workers. The destruction also sent debris into rivers, farms, and bays downstream, leading to the 1884 Woodruff case and a permanent injunction against dumping mining waste. The site endures as both an industrial landscape and a restored historic town.